What Lies Beneath: Home Renovation Discoveries

One of my favorite aspects of home renovation is discovering objects buried beneath the walls, floors, and ceilings. Lost toys, forgotten tools, old photographs and ephemera — these intriguing little time capsules provide clues about a home's construction and illuminate its storied past.

Sometimes the discoveries are fortuitous, like the time I found several rolls of vintage wallpaper in an attic crawl space. Other discoveries are creepy, like the soiled underpants our contractor found tucked between the studs of a closet. Still others are simply mysterious: unlabeled bottles, unfinished letters, raffle tickets for unclaimed prizes.

The objects pictured above were discovered by Katy Elliott whose painstaking renovation of a 257-year-old house in Marblehead, Massachusetts is chronicled in her delightful blog, katyelliott.com.